[lit-ideas] Re: What Won't Win No Poetry Competitions
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 12:59:04 +0000 (GMT)
________________________________
From: Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, 13 December 2011, 19:00
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: What Won't Win No Poetry Competitions
>> I didn't know I loved you Until they began to let her down
>small part of me must silently rejoice
About that dead woman in third person voice
Whose death let me at last discover
The other second-person voice lover
Still I must rejoice in full silence
Lest I be a suspect of violence>
The switching between first, second and third person is taken to great heights
in Dylan's tour de force version of "Delia" [on 'World Gone Wrong'], which
makes the switch in seemingly natural yet always telling ways, returning again
and again to a seeming first-person pay-off line "All the friends I ever had
are gone".
Having killed Delia, we switch to a kind of ever-shifting amalgam of first and
second and third person, which encapsulates at once what the killer ["Cutty"]
sees in first-person and experiences in the first person, his attributions here
to the parents in a kind of second person [You weep...you moan.. you think it
wouldn't have been so bad had she died at home..], and a third person narrative
perspective. When we return to that first-person in the pay-off line, that line
resonantes with the second-person perspective that the parents have also lost
"All" they "ever had" and also a narrator's third-person detached judgment
about what had been lost in these human relationships:-
"Delia's daddy weep
Delia's mama moan
Wouldn't have been so bad
Had the poor girl died at home
All the friends I ever had are gone"
Later Cutty is caught:
"Judge say to Cutty
'What's this noise about?'
All about them rounders, Judge
Tryin' to cut me out
All the friends I ever had are gone
Cutty say to the judge
'What might be my fine?'
Judge say, 'Poor boy -
You got ninety nine'
All the friends I ever had are gone
Cutty in the jailhouse
Drinking from an old tin cup
Delia she's in the graveyard
She ain't gonna ever get up
All the friends I ever had are gone
Delia, o Delia
How can it be?
Wanted with those rounders
Never did want me
Delia o Delia
How can it be?
All about those rounders
Never had time for me
All the friends I ever had are gone"
The All Music Guide rightly comments that Dylan is saying more with others'
songs on World Gone Wrong than most say with their own, and using these old
songs to paint a worried and telling picture of the contemporary world. This
'technique' of using old forms to address current concerns later becomes
prevalent in his own songs, for example in an album like Modern Times, although
being lyrics the music and the nuances of Dylan's delivery are very important
to their effect, and to gather what kind of sensibility would sing:
"If it keep on raining the levee gonna break [x2]
Everybody saying this is a day only the Lord could make
Well, I worked on the levee, mama, both night and day
I got to the river an' I threw my clothes away
I paid my time and now I'm as good as new
They can't take me back unless I want them to
If it keep on raining the levee gonna break
Some of these people going to strip you of all they can take
I can't stop here I ain't ready to unload
Riches and salvation can be waiting behind the next bend in the road
I picked you up from the gutter and this is the thanks I get
You say you want me to quit you, I told you 'No, not just yet'
I look in your eyes I see nobody other than me
I see all that I am and all I hope to be
If it keep on raining the levee gonna to break
Some of these people don't know which route to take
When I'm with you I forget I was ever blue
Without you there's no meaning in anything I do
Some people on the road carrying everything they own
Some people got barely enough skin to cover their bones
Put on your cat clothes, mama, put on your evening dress
Few more years of hard work then there'll be a thousand years of happiness
If it keep on raining the levee gonna to break
I tried to get you to love me but I won't repeat that mistake
If it keep on raining the levee gonna to break
Plenty of cheap stuff out there still around to take
I woke up this morning buttered eggs in my bed
I ain't got enough room to even raise my head
Come back, baby, say we never more will part
Don't be a stranger with no brain or heart
If it keep on raining the levee gonna to break
Some people still sleeping, some people are wide awake"
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